Dune: Part 2 (2023 Movie)

When I watched Dune Part I, I knew the director Villeneuve was taking liberties with the story but didn’t mind that much. So going into Part II, I knew he would continue to make changes and I mentally and emotionally prepared myself. And it was good that I did, because there were some significant changes from the book.

• Paul and Chani never had their first son, so he was never killed by Rabban.
• Alia, Paul’s preborn sister, was not born in this movie. She was totally in-vitro the entire time. So she never killed the Baron. That fell to Paul.
• Chani was a fremen warrior and nothing else. She was not the protege of Lady Jessica, a Wise Woman in training.
• Paul’s transformation into Muad’dib was very understated. His visions were ones of billions starving, instead of a monstrous galaxy wide jihad where billions were killed. His prescient sight was almost non-existent.

I could live with those changes. I didn’t care for them and I thought the director was wrong, but I was ok. I was fine with this movie and those changes.

Until the last five minutes of the movie. Then I exploded at the last scene. I was angrier than I have ever been about changes from a book to a movie. I was angrier than when Lucas changed the dvd release of Return of the Jedi and cgi’d in Christian Hayden at the ghost scene with Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. I was ready to take a dull spoon to Lucas then.

And that was nothing to how I felt at the ending of this movie. I had gotten this bluray for my b-day and after that ending, I will be throwing it into the garbage along with Part I. I am so done with Villeneuve that I will never watch another movie by this expletive expletive expletive guy if I can help it. If there is a Dune Part III (which it really seems necessary as this doesn’t complete the book’s story at all), I will ignore it harder than I did Star Wars episodes 7, 8 and 9. Villeneuve is not only dead to me, he is the devil incarnate and the source of all evil in the world.

In Part I, Villeneuve kept the relationship between Paul and Chani kind of at odds, which made sense. But in the second part of the book, Chani and Paul were not just lovers, but soul mates. They had a child together. Chani knew that she had to share Paul as Duke Paul Atreides, Muad’dib the Fremen Leader and The Kwisatz Haderach, the genetic superman that was the next step in humanity’s path. She knew all this, even knew what the cost was, and she not only accepted it, she gave her heart and soul to support Paul. She was the bedrock upon which Paul rested. He knew his time was limited with her and he knew that any outcome that would prevent her death would make the Jihad unimaginably worse, trillions dead instead of billions. They were the two sides of one coin. In the book, Paul had to marry the daughter of the Emperor, Princess Irulan. But it was a marriage of politics and Chani was always his love and the mother of his children. Irulan was simply a figure head. Lady Jessica had to go through the same thing with her Duke Leto, being his concubine and mother of his heir, but leaving marriage open to other Great Houses. Jessica counseled Chani on the reality of the situation and Paul reassured Chani of his love and devotion. Chani knew what she had to sacrifice and chose to still love Paul.

In the movie, Chani storms out of the Imperial Hall and calls a worm to go off by herself into the desert. She abandons Paul. She abandons Duke Paul Atreides. She abandons Muad’dib. She abandons the Kwisatz Haderach. She abandons who she was in the book.

If Villeneuve will make such a fundamental change to a character, he has completely lost my trust.

From a purely technical side of things, I didn’t like this movie either. First, the bass track also contained the audio track, so if I wanted to hear what anyone was saying, I had to put up with floor rumbling noise that I could literally feel from 20feet away, while sitting on my couch. There is no need for crap like that. The other thing that annoyed me greatly was how dark many of the scenes were. There were times I turned my tv on and off to make sure it wasn’t misbehaving. There is no need to make a movie so dark that the audience HAS to sit in complete darkness to make out the details.

So between the technical annoyances and then the utter betrayal of the relationship between Paul and Chani. I ended up hating this movie. I don’t know what the normal person who has never read the book will think of this. They might be just fine. But I AM NOT JUST A NORMAL PERSON WHO HAS NEVER READ THE BOOK. Dune is as close to a sacred text as I’ll ever have in the fiction department.